This relates generally to manufacturing techniques for electronic devices, and, more particularly, to shaping device structures such as display structures.
Displays are widely used in electronic devices to display images. Displays such as liquid crystal displays display images by controlling liquid crystal material associated with an array of image pixels. A typical liquid crystal display has a color filter layer and a thin film transistor layer between which the liquid crystal material is interposed. A cover glass layer is often used to protect the surface of an electronic device display.
The material that is used in forming display layers such as color filter array layers, thin-film-transistor layers, and cover glass layers may be provided in large panels referred to as mother glass. The mother glass is typically singulated into device-sized pieces using a scribing and breaking process. Device-sized display layers may then be laminated together to form displays. In some situations, mechanical milling machines may be used to mill openings into glass layers. For example, the cover glass layer of a display may be provided with a speaker port opening using milling techniques.
Conventional singulation techniques based on scribing and breaking can only be used to form straight cuts, limiting their applicability. Conventional milling techniques may require multiple passes when forming certain shapes to avoid stress buildup, which can reduce throughput and limit the types of features that can be incorporated into a glass layer.
It would therefore be desirable to be able to provide enhanced techniques for manufacturing electronic device structures.